I'm not a lawyer and not aware of the country you live in. But you should know that you didn't even pay for a full-licence version. OEM could mean - at least if you ask Microsoft - that you are not allowed to run it on a PC of your choice; or transfer it to another PC once the current one is dead (what I do not hope for yours to happen). OEM-s are limited for the PC on which they are installed, and sold for this specific purpose: to be used by an Original Equipment Manufacturer at the production / assembly of that computer. A full license (which may be expensive without any stretch of imagination) allows the transfer to a subsequent machine once the software has been removed from the first one; as long as it is installed (and subsequently used) on only one PC at a time. Read the EULA coming with your merchandise if in doubt.
In the country where I reside, you can buy OEM-licenses for the simple reason that people like me - cursing the fact that there is no way to buy a machine without Microsoft-Bloatware - have licenses with OEM-numbers on the shelf, of which we never even bothered to remove the shrink-wrap. I for one usually throw in a Knoppix or other *nix Live-CD and fdisk the whole lot. So the OEM-license numbers that I was forced to obtain with some of my boxes have never been used or activated. I don't know if this is still valid, but there was a time, once upon a time at least, when others could activate their boxes with such OEM-license-numbers, irrespective of the actual PC, as long as it was activated (and used) uniquely.
Why don't I have modpoints??? +5 is adequate for this post, because it is spot on. Microsoft not only relies on the schools, the universities, for the 'first-shot-is.free'; they also rely on the low-priced OEM versions. Would they charge for the first shot what they charge later, piracy would be rampant, or people would be up in protest against them, like they are against banks. Very few people are willing to pay a full licence price (don't come to me arguing about student licenses), I repeat: the full price, for their PCs. Alternative software would be rampant.
In the beginning, you wrote a few useful words. later on, you proved to be not in the know, when you mentioned 'import'. Nevermind, here it is about 'use'. You can't read the law literally here. It wasn't meant to be literal. If you buy device X, it is the manufacturer/seller who indemnifies you (semi-)automatically. It is not to be expected that you get a clear picture about the intellectual property on a plasma display before you buy one. When you buy one, and a problem of e.g. patent pops up, it will be very difficult if not impossible to go after you, because a buyer may expect the seller to sell whatever is legal only. Should this not be the case, then the seller needs to refund all expenditure of the buyer irrespective of warranty.
See, this is the misery of the Gnome developers (pun intended). They can't understand - worse: they can't accept - that different people have different concepts. I for one feel that a taskbar was the worst invention in UI-land since... MS-DOS. So I don't want one. Point taken. But now, I want anything but Gnome. It is plain crap, though it does not have / need a taskbar. And the nail in the Gnome coffin should and will be that the developers still know exactly what I want.I have tried and Gnome 3 is about the worst taskbar-less UI that one can imagine; yes, that's just my opinion. But since they don't want to allow me to configure their interface to make it suit my needs, I have to go elsewhere; and that currently is KDE that I was able to tweak into a taskbar-less UI. It could be better, still, but at least they allow me to configure my own desktop as I so like.
Yep, the very very sad story is that while MS was stuck in panel/taskbar-land since W95, we could have developed a totally free and useful interface. Instead, we felt we had to duplicate either Windows or OSX.
You're wrong, though you're better than your -1 as of now.
Have those who modded you down see the crap of windows placement in the video? Totally top left. Huuh. I though we had been over this in the last millennium. And then Forefox pops out in the centre. No idea, why we need the extra 'window' around its window?? I mean, what is is good for when you open a Firefox to have it centered with real estate margins? And then he opened the system information, and - up popped a ridiculously large grayish area with around 5 lines of information, and 98% of vide. Of course totally obfuscating the underlying Firefox and showing almost nothing. Then it was time to stop the self-flagellation and close the YouTube video. When the Steves see this video, they'lll have an extra drink on the Gnome developers, who have shown a very gnomish stature in designing - if one may call this so - a user interface.
it is a tad shallow, the whole matter. Who, in the first place, has 'declared' online learning to be disruptive? We've had this for decades. First, it was the radio that was supposed to bring education into the dark forests at the edge of humanity. Then, pictures were added, and Sesame Street was to revolutionize child education and bring about Einsteins by the dozens. Now the author claims lack of historic research as a new paradigm. Been there, tried it myself (as university lecturer), failed miserably.
Nothing to be seen, move on to the next/.-story; that my advice.
My astonishment of the month of September: One mod point only for parent and FP at 232 other comments. Later on, some ludicrous comments get many more. Maybe the Slashdot community has slowly migrated from the nerds and geeks to the gadgetry crowd??
Okay, now on-topic: Exactly my thoughts. I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for a desktop machine to run ARM. Not a netbook, not a tablet. Oh, yes, I'd also like to have a tablet-based-ARM running Debian; but that's off the topic. I want to have a desktop as well, stationary, with a keyboard, a 24-inch monitor plugged in, a DVD-drive, space for 2 built-in hard disks, 5.1 sound, a number of USBs to stick in stuff as needed temporarily. For the last 4 years this was a AMD...-EE with a TDP of 45W. I even paid extra. Now I am developing on a Pandaboard, where that whole board goes with 2.5 W. The Energy-Efficient AMD still needs a fan, and produces quite some warmth. The single bridge - though more efficient than north/south can barely be touched, despite of the build-in heat-sink. And what I am doing is working on text, browsing, e-mailing, P2P, ssh into my servers, playing of media. I had thought the Panda would be sufficient, and it almost is, even. Now I want an ARM, with less than 10 W altogether, in a - if need be - MicroATX casing, with the speakers attached, 6 external USB ports, etc. This should not consume more than 10 W on ARM, while it still does around 40 W on x86.
I'd mod you up had I mod points and you had not mentioned VBA. R has some logic sense and makes some sense. Perl is fine, as well. VBA is not exactly fostering logic, though. It rather constitutes a pair of crutches for non-programmers who don't feel like understanding how to program and yet obtain results.
Depends very much on the office (US, EPO, JP, etc.). Though it is a small fraction of the cost of a granted patent at least in the EPO. Though, as I wrote, it is much too expensive still to do it just as anticipatory publication. Wait, you don't have to publish at the same office, in case you *really* wanted to do that. Then you'd just do this at any office (any country) where this is the cheapest, and it is just as well an anticipatory publication. For the validity in another grant procedure it is totally irrelevant if your application has been taken through a grant procedure or not.
Sometimes I wonder where the good old logic has evaporated to. Sorry, but what sense does this make? And how does a moderator perceive this as contribution? Open-Sourcing firstly allows everyone to make use of the results. Secondly, which patents are you talking about? Wasn't the TFA about no patents for the universities? And how does this fit into 'serious competition'? The *universities* must not ask for patents; so what does this have to make with Intel's competition? And even if you felt that - should Intel fear competition - they ought to ask for patents, this yet fails to make sense, since those licenses are *not* the same as public domain, so they protect the copyright *for* Intel; and maybe give Intel a leverage over AMD w.r.t. working with FOSS developers-developers-developers.?
A clever one here! No. Because laying open your software means obtaining copyrights (which in principle you have in any case). The beauty of the chosen license is *not* that you have the copyright, but that you define the uses by third parties. Like the GPL which requires the users to stick to the license and make the sources available. No flame war here, please! A patent, however, is very different: It gives you the right to the underlying *idea(s)*. The patent doesn't give the source code and neither a specific programming language. As a layman's example: a patent covering a car in its entity would prevent anyone else from building any car, whichever colour, brand, seating, petrol or diesel, gearbox or not. Copyright 'only' prevents anyone else from producing another Merc, or anything close enough to be confounded with an original Merc.
No patent examiner will go through billions of lines of FOSS code to check if someone happens to have implemented thingy in FOSS software before, eventually.
You *are* trying hard in this thread, congrats, but you miss as well... . The license-free patent means that you publish a publicly available document, e.g. a patent application, so that nobody else can do the same thing. Fine, but then any publication will do. Anticipation has nothing to do with where it is been made public. We all know patent examiners have stress, and can't see all journals. Still okay, just ask for the patent, and never pursue the whole thingy once it has reached its publication state (e.g. as A3 document). Withdraw at that moment, and there is no grant, no grant procedure and yet nobody can file another time. I doubt that this is very clever, but at least it is closest to what you seem to actually intend. It is already possible.
Would be nice, not to get creationism into a patent debate!? I wrote a longer thingy further up in case you wanted to know why you are right, and yet you are wrong. And I hate patents so much, and still, your are right only in your sense of fairness. You forgot that, according to *the law* you can not get a patent when the invention is anticipated by prior art documents. It is, actually, not the law that stands in the way of fairness. It rather is the case law, earlier decisions in similar cases, and mostly the Supreme Court that bent the implementation into some crooked setup. Read up on the famous ruling of the Supreme court forcing the USPTO to grant software patents. Google Diamond vs Diehr if in doubt. So you are right only in principle. Because how would get Bob to deposit his invention for thingy if Alice had invented it? Except Alice told Bob. If Bob broke into Alice's house, Bob still wouldn't get the rights. Okay, we agree: only if Alice voluntarily told Bob. But Alice also cannot get a patent, if she disclosed her own invention in a journal (I know this is being softened up as well; but still valid in principle). At least, Bob can not get the rights if Alice published it in a journal. Is is asked too much from Alice, that when she invents something and wants a patent, she doesn't voluntarily tell Bob? I am not so sure.
Sorry, but this is dead wrong. As much as it might be well intended. This has always been a topic of congestion and constipation among the patent offices, and like the imperial units of measuring, the USPTO being an exception.
It actually is about the question if the best protection in the best sense is eventually the one accorded to the first person who provably invented the thingy. The heroic Americans thought this was actually *the* thing to do. While more temperate characters felt, that healthy pragmatism dictates that the first person to drop in a PO (Patent Office) should be given the rights. So the latter duly falls under "first to file", while the former dishes out to the "first to invent". Agreeably, the former is theoretically far superior in fairness. Though, it also used to be a generous source of income to lawyers and subsequently be driven into the ground - because how can you *prove* that you did invent thingy? Calling in your neighbours, mistress, friends, the bartender where you first 'disclosed' your invention to a bunch of drunkards? Good intention, though horrible to implement. For "first to file" this is easy: Just check the date when thingy was deposited at some PO (again, Patent Office). Rather easy, and not much chances to call in a learned justice to deliberate if April 17th was before or after July 23rd in that same year.
Now it is getting difficult and people tend to confuse this with "anticipated". So I leave this part for another round.
+5 for you! (If I could) I've been waiting just the same time for just the same thing. Whenever The Register pleases itself with a 'test' of a new "fondleslab", I ask 'But does it run Linux?' and some retard will say, yes, under chroot, or Android actually is Linux, or likewise. Very very boring. Why does no manufacturer understand that I am willing to fork out reasonable money for a device that allows me to install Debian / Ubuntu?? What is soooo wrong with allowing the consumer of your hardware to run the software of her liking? I mean, I run Ubuntu on a Pandaboard and on a number of netbooks. What's wrong with an ARM-based tablet?
I take a bet that Microsoft has 'encouraged' the manufacturers to prevent the loading of Linux by threatening them with OEM-prices or similar into subservience of not allowing a Free OS.
I read the review and there was no mention of it. I have the money, I only have yet to find a good 10-inch tablet on which I can install Linux. No, not the Android-kernel, but, let's say Debian. And not in a chroot, not with soldering. Just from a USB, for example. I don't know how many feel like me, but no business with me if I can't run my Linux distro of choice on it. Am I the only one?
You are choosing to define 3D as having the ability to change focus, which is not what 3D is trying to be, and it never will be.
This is blatantly wrong, alas. You see 3D every day in your life (if you have no specific vision impairment). And so does everyone around you. And for most of us, it works perfectly well. The term is used too loosely by the manufacturers. One ought to force them to remove their misnomer and call it 'stereoscopy' instead, and I'd be perfectly happy. And it wouldn't have clouded your own argumentation. Replace all '3D' in your post (except of the first) with 'stereoscopy' and you'd get mod marks from me.
I think you are overdoing it, though you are correct. In my own experience (and not only my own), the larger stepping stone is from 2D to stereoscopy. I have rarely met a person with strain watching a 2D-movie (or looking at a normal 2D picture). The discomfort comes solely from a mis-interpretation of the content. There is no physical difficulty at all looking at a 2D-object for anyone. The 'problem' that you cite is totally psychological: One interprets a depth into the 2D-image. With stereoscopy it is different, because the stimuli for left and right are different, forcing a depth through parallax on your eyes that is not backed up by the whole range of 3D-information. So it is not a psychological but a physiological 'strain' that the observers are exposed to. And, no, I don't subscribe to the notion that stereoscopy ruins the eyes.
I'd mod you up if I could. You're about the first in here to point out that those companies ought to be flogged for calling 2 2-dimensional images '3D'. You right with the focus, though there are more artifacts that render it impossible to obtain 3D from a stereoscopic image.
We have discussed this ad nauseam in here, over the years. Nobody gets eye strain and headaches from 3D. That's what you do all day, all your life (except you had lost the use of an eye, of course). What you get headaches from is actually stereoscopy, 2D with some depth information.
And not everyone likes those! I for one was doing leading stereoscopy research a quarter of a century ago, and I can promise that I don't get headaches nor eye strain. But you'd have to flog me to one of those so-called 3D-displays; for quite another reason: The so-called 'depth' is a very strange decoration-like effect consisting of more of a structure of layers than depth. Yep, I did try, again, in one of those expensive high-end shops some weeks ago, with a 5-digit US$ exhibit of a piece by the company with the 4 letters, the first being an 'S'. I used their sales arrangement, their acreen, their glasses, and watched their demo movie, with a waterfall. (Maybe some of you have seen this as well?) As much as there was 'depth' in the water tumbling down, the front contained a forest. It took me no more than 30 seconds to spot the loony: the forest in front had no depth at all. It was rather like a two-dimensional theater decoration. Then I knew immediately that zero progress has been made on '3D'. Actually, that's impossible, theoretically impossible, because 2 2D-images do not contain a 3D-space. They can logically not contain a 3D-space.
Ask, if you wanted all the gory details. But, please, never tell anyone that 3D hurts your eyes and brain.
I tried both versions, on Virtualbox. While the 'normal' one booted okay, the 'de luxe' just stays with a black screen. Nope, the checksum is even okay. So another downlaod won't cut it.
This means there is no effective counterpoise to the seeker of the frivolous patent, since the patent office itself has nothing to lose from rank incompetence.
Some with more time on their hands have dug up that the priority date was 17 years in the past. So incompetence of the officers in charge is anything but certain.
And what do you propose? Make it a criminal offence to file for a frivolous patent? Punishable by what?
You don't the point, fully. Yes. it might be overturned. But you sound like that was 'okay'. It isn't. Most SMEs simply lack the funds, it hampers innovation, it increases the end users' costs since the expenditure has to be recovered. Your point is correct, but the 'help' of invalidating is more often than not impossible to achieve. Don't cure the symptoms. Cure the root cause: Have only valid applications granted.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not a lawyer and not aware of the country you live in.
But you should know that you didn't even pay for a full-licence version. OEM could mean - at least if you ask Microsoft - that you are not allowed to run it on a PC of your choice; or transfer it to another PC once the current one is dead (what I do not hope for yours to happen). OEM-s are limited for the PC on which they are installed, and sold for this specific purpose: to be used by an Original Equipment Manufacturer at the production / assembly of that computer.
A full license (which may be expensive without any stretch of imagination) allows the transfer to a subsequent machine once the software has been removed from the first one; as long as it is installed (and subsequently used) on only one PC at a time. Read the EULA coming with your merchandise if in doubt.
In the country where I reside, you can buy OEM-licenses for the simple reason that people like me - cursing the fact that there is no way to buy a machine without Microsoft-Bloatware - have licenses with OEM-numbers on the shelf, of which we never even bothered to remove the shrink-wrap. I for one usually throw in a Knoppix or other *nix Live-CD and fdisk the whole lot. So the OEM-license numbers that I was forced to obtain with some of my boxes have never been used or activated.
I don't know if this is still valid, but there was a time, once upon a time at least, when others could activate their boxes with such OEM-license-numbers, irrespective of the actual PC, as long as it was activated (and used) uniquely.
Why don't I have modpoints???
+5 is adequate for this post, because it is spot on.
Microsoft not only relies on the schools, the universities, for the 'first-shot-is.free'; they also rely on the low-priced OEM versions. Would they charge for the first shot what they charge later, piracy would be rampant, or people would be up in protest against them, like they are against banks. Very few people are willing to pay a full licence price (don't come to me arguing about student licenses), I repeat: the full price, for their PCs. Alternative software would be rampant.
In the beginning, you wrote a few useful words. later on, you proved to be not in the know, when you mentioned 'import'. Nevermind, here it is about 'use'.
You can't read the law literally here. It wasn't meant to be literal. If you buy device X, it is the manufacturer/seller who indemnifies you (semi-)automatically. It is not to be expected that you get a clear picture about the intellectual property on a plasma display before you buy one. When you buy one, and a problem of e.g. patent pops up, it will be very difficult if not impossible to go after you, because a buyer may expect the seller to sell whatever is legal only.
Should this not be the case, then the seller needs to refund all expenditure of the buyer irrespective of warranty.
See, this is the misery of the Gnome developers (pun intended). They can't understand - worse: they can't accept - that different people have different concepts. I for one feel that a taskbar was the worst invention in UI-land since ... MS-DOS. So I don't want one. Point taken. But now, I want anything but Gnome. It is plain crap, though it does not have / need a taskbar. And the nail in the Gnome coffin should and will be that the developers still know exactly what I want.I have tried and Gnome 3 is about the worst taskbar-less UI that one can imagine; yes, that's just my opinion. But since they don't want to allow me to configure their interface to make it suit my needs, I have to go elsewhere; and that currently is KDE that I was able to tweak into a taskbar-less UI. It could be better, still, but at least they allow me to configure my own desktop as I so like.
Yep, the very very sad story is that while MS was stuck in panel/taskbar-land since W95, we could have developed a totally free and useful interface. Instead, we felt we had to duplicate either Windows or OSX.
You're wrong, though you're better than your -1 as of now.
Have those who modded you down see the crap of windows placement in the video? Totally top left. Huuh. I though we had been over this in the last millennium. And then Forefox pops out in the centre. No idea, why we need the extra 'window' around its window?? I mean, what is is good for when you open a Firefox to have it centered with real estate margins? And then he opened the system information, and - up popped a ridiculously large grayish area with around 5 lines of information, and 98% of vide. Of course totally obfuscating the underlying Firefox and showing almost nothing.
Then it was time to stop the self-flagellation and close the YouTube video. When the Steves see this video, they'lll have an extra drink on the Gnome developers, who have shown a very gnomish stature in designing - if one may call this so - a user interface.
it is a tad shallow, the whole matter. Who, in the first place, has 'declared' online learning to be disruptive? We've had this for decades. First, it was the radio that was supposed to bring education into the dark forests at the edge of humanity. Then, pictures were added, and Sesame Street was to revolutionize child education and bring about Einsteins by the dozens. Now the author claims lack of historic research as a new paradigm.
Been there, tried it myself (as university lecturer), failed miserably.
Nothing to be seen, move on to the next /.-story; that my advice.
Hahaha. Does it have / support DVD? 5.1? How about Debian? Did you read my post?
My astonishment of the month of September: One mod point only for parent and FP at 232 other comments.
Later on, some ludicrous comments get many more. Maybe the Slashdot community has slowly migrated from the nerds and geeks to the gadgetry crowd??
Okay, now on-topic: Exactly my thoughts. I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for a desktop machine to run ARM. Not a netbook, not a tablet. Oh, yes, I'd also like to have a tablet-based-ARM running Debian; but that's off the topic. ...-EE with a TDP of 45W. I even paid extra. Now I am developing on a Pandaboard, where that whole board goes with 2.5 W. The Energy-Efficient AMD still needs a fan, and produces quite some warmth. The single bridge - though more efficient than north/south can barely be touched, despite of the build-in heat-sink. And what I am doing is working on text, browsing, e-mailing, P2P, ssh into my servers, playing of media. I had thought the Panda would be sufficient, and it almost is, even. Now I want an ARM, with less than 10 W altogether, in a - if need be - MicroATX casing, with the speakers attached, 6 external USB ports, etc. This should not consume more than 10 W on ARM, while it still does around 40 W on x86.
I want to have a desktop as well, stationary, with a keyboard, a 24-inch monitor plugged in, a DVD-drive, space for 2 built-in hard disks, 5.1 sound, a number of USBs to stick in stuff as needed temporarily. For the last 4 years this was a AMD
I'd mod you up had I mod points and you had not mentioned VBA. R has some logic sense and makes some sense. Perl is fine, as well. VBA is not exactly fostering logic, though. It rather constitutes a pair of crutches for non-programmers who don't feel like understanding how to program and yet obtain results.
So your grade is just a few notches higher, ain't it? ...
So I must be thinking that MS Office is an operating system
Depends very much on the office (US, EPO, JP, etc.). Though it is a small fraction of the cost of a granted patent at least in the EPO. Though, as I wrote, it is much too expensive still to do it just as anticipatory publication. Wait, you don't have to publish at the same office, in case you *really* wanted to do that. Then you'd just do this at any office (any country) where this is the cheapest, and it is just as well an anticipatory publication.
For the validity in another grant procedure it is totally irrelevant if your application has been taken through a grant procedure or not.
Sometimes I wonder where the good old logic has evaporated to. Sorry, but what sense does this make? And how does a moderator perceive this as contribution?
Open-Sourcing firstly allows everyone to make use of the results. Secondly, which patents are you talking about? Wasn't the TFA about no patents for the universities? And how does this fit into 'serious competition'? The *universities* must not ask for patents; so what does this have to make with Intel's competition? And even if you felt that - should Intel fear competition - they ought to ask for patents, this yet fails to make sense, since those licenses are *not* the same as public domain, so they protect the copyright *for* Intel; and maybe give Intel a leverage over AMD w.r.t. working with FOSS developers-developers-developers.?
A clever one here!
No. Because laying open your software means obtaining copyrights (which in principle you have in any case). The beauty of the chosen license is *not* that you have the copyright, but that you define the uses by third parties. Like the GPL which requires the users to stick to the license and make the sources available. No flame war here, please!
A patent, however, is very different: It gives you the right to the underlying *idea(s)*. The patent doesn't give the source code and neither a specific programming language.
As a layman's example: a patent covering a car in its entity would prevent anyone else from building any car, whichever colour, brand, seating, petrol or diesel, gearbox or not. Copyright 'only' prevents anyone else from producing another Merc, or anything close enough to be confounded with an original Merc.
No patent examiner will go through billions of lines of FOSS code to check if someone happens to have implemented thingy in FOSS software before, eventually.
You *are* trying hard in this thread, congrats, but you miss as well ... .
The license-free patent means that you publish a publicly available document, e.g. a patent application, so that nobody else can do the same thing. Fine, but then any publication will do. Anticipation has nothing to do with where it is been made public. We all know patent examiners have stress, and can't see all journals. Still okay, just ask for the patent, and never pursue the whole thingy once it has reached its publication state (e.g. as A3 document). Withdraw at that moment, and there is no grant, no grant procedure and yet nobody can file another time. I doubt that this is very clever, but at least it is closest to what you seem to actually intend. It is already possible.
Would be nice, not to get creationism into a patent debate!?
I wrote a longer thingy further up in case you wanted to know why you are right, and yet you are wrong. And I hate patents so much, and still, your are right only in your sense of fairness. You forgot that, according to *the law* you can not get a patent when the invention is anticipated by prior art documents. It is, actually, not the law that stands in the way of fairness. It rather is the case law, earlier decisions in similar cases, and mostly the Supreme Court that bent the implementation into some crooked setup. Read up on the famous ruling of the Supreme court forcing the USPTO to grant software patents. Google Diamond vs Diehr if in doubt.
So you are right only in principle. Because how would get Bob to deposit his invention for thingy if Alice had invented it? Except Alice told Bob. If Bob broke into Alice's house, Bob still wouldn't get the rights. Okay, we agree: only if Alice voluntarily told Bob. But Alice also cannot get a patent, if she disclosed her own invention in a journal (I know this is being softened up as well; but still valid in principle). At least, Bob can not get the rights if Alice published it in a journal.
Is is asked too much from Alice, that when she invents something and wants a patent, she doesn't voluntarily tell Bob?
I am not so sure.
Sorry, but this is dead wrong. As much as it might be well intended. This has always been a topic of congestion and constipation among the patent offices, and like the imperial units of measuring, the USPTO being an exception.
It actually is about the question if the best protection in the best sense is eventually the one accorded to the first person who provably invented the thingy. The heroic Americans thought this was actually *the* thing to do.
While more temperate characters felt, that healthy pragmatism dictates that the first person to drop in a PO (Patent Office) should be given the rights. So the latter duly falls under "first to file", while the former dishes out to the "first to invent".
Agreeably, the former is theoretically far superior in fairness. Though, it also used to be a generous source of income to lawyers and subsequently be driven into the ground - because how can you *prove* that you did invent thingy? Calling in your neighbours, mistress, friends, the bartender where you first 'disclosed' your invention to a bunch of drunkards? Good intention, though horrible to implement.
For "first to file" this is easy: Just check the date when thingy was deposited at some PO (again, Patent Office). Rather easy, and not much chances to call in a learned justice to deliberate if April 17th was before or after July 23rd in that same year.
Now it is getting difficult and people tend to confuse this with "anticipated". So I leave this part for another round.
+5 for you! (If I could)
I've been waiting just the same time for just the same thing. Whenever The Register pleases itself with a 'test' of a new "fondleslab", I ask 'But does it run Linux?' and some retard will say, yes, under chroot, or Android actually is Linux, or likewise. Very very boring.
Why does no manufacturer understand that I am willing to fork out reasonable money for a device that allows me to install Debian / Ubuntu?? What is soooo wrong with allowing the consumer of your hardware to run the software of her liking? I mean, I run Ubuntu on a Pandaboard and on a number of netbooks. What's wrong with an ARM-based tablet?
I take a bet that Microsoft has 'encouraged' the manufacturers to prevent the loading of Linux by threatening them with OEM-prices or similar into subservience of not allowing a Free OS.
Lame? no
Redundant? no
I read the review and there was no mention of it. I have the money, I only have yet to find a good 10-inch tablet on which I can install Linux. No, not the Android-kernel, but, let's say Debian. And not in a chroot, not with soldering. Just from a USB, for example.
I don't know how many feel like me, but no business with me if I can't run my Linux distro of choice on it. Am I the only one?
You are choosing to define 3D as having the ability to change focus, which is not what 3D is trying to be, and it never will be.
This is blatantly wrong, alas. You see 3D every day in your life (if you have no specific vision impairment). And so does everyone around you. And for most of us, it works perfectly well. The term is used too loosely by the manufacturers. One ought to force them to remove their misnomer and call it 'stereoscopy' instead, and I'd be perfectly happy. And it wouldn't have clouded your own argumentation. Replace all '3D' in your post (except of the first) with 'stereoscopy' and you'd get mod marks from me.
I think you are overdoing it, though you are correct. In my own experience (and not only my own), the larger stepping stone is from 2D to stereoscopy. I have rarely met a person with strain watching a 2D-movie (or looking at a normal 2D picture). The discomfort comes solely from a mis-interpretation of the content. There is no physical difficulty at all looking at a 2D-object for anyone. The 'problem' that you cite is totally psychological: One interprets a depth into the 2D-image.
With stereoscopy it is different, because the stimuli for left and right are different, forcing a depth through parallax on your eyes that is not backed up by the whole range of 3D-information. So it is not a psychological but a physiological 'strain' that the observers are exposed to.
And, no, I don't subscribe to the notion that stereoscopy ruins the eyes.
I'd mod you up if I could. You're about the first in here to point out that those companies ought to be flogged for calling 2 2-dimensional images '3D'. You right with the focus, though there are more artifacts that render it impossible to obtain 3D from a stereoscopic image.
We have discussed this ad nauseam in here, over the years.
Nobody gets eye strain and headaches from 3D. That's what you do all day, all your life (except you had lost the use of an eye, of course).
What you get headaches from is actually stereoscopy, 2D with some depth information.
And not everyone likes those! I for one was doing leading stereoscopy research a quarter of a century ago, and I can promise that I don't get headaches nor eye strain. But you'd have to flog me to one of those so-called 3D-displays; for quite another reason: The so-called 'depth' is a very strange decoration-like effect consisting of more of a structure of layers than depth. Yep, I did try, again, in one of those expensive high-end shops some weeks ago, with a 5-digit US$ exhibit of a piece by the company with the 4 letters, the first being an 'S'. I used their sales arrangement, their acreen, their glasses, and watched their demo movie, with a waterfall. (Maybe some of you have seen this as well?) As much as there was 'depth' in the water tumbling down, the front contained a forest. It took me no more than 30 seconds to spot the loony: the forest in front had no depth at all. It was rather like a two-dimensional theater decoration. Then I knew immediately that zero progress has been made on '3D'. Actually, that's impossible, theoretically impossible, because 2 2D-images do not contain a 3D-space. They can logically not contain a 3D-space.
Ask, if you wanted all the gory details.
But, please, never tell anyone that 3D hurts your eyes and brain.
I tried both versions, on Virtualbox. While the 'normal' one booted okay, the 'de luxe' just stays with a black screen.
Nope, the checksum is even okay. So another downlaod won't cut it.
Why??
This means there is no effective counterpoise to the seeker of the frivolous patent, since the patent office itself has nothing to lose from rank incompetence.
Some with more time on their hands have dug up that the priority date was 17 years in the past. So incompetence of the officers in charge is anything but certain.
And what do you propose? Make it a criminal offence to file for a frivolous patent? Punishable by what?
You don't the point, fully. Yes. it might be overturned. But you sound like that was 'okay'. It isn't. Most SMEs simply lack the funds, it hampers innovation, it increases the end users' costs since the expenditure has to be recovered.
Your point is correct, but the 'help' of invalidating is more often than not impossible to achieve.
Don't cure the symptoms. Cure the root cause: Have only valid applications granted.